Welty out of her element in historical fiction, and 2 notes on one of her best stories

Eudora Welt's story The Burning, in her 4th and final story collection and in "Collected Stories," is her first (and only?) historical fiction, her attempt to examine the effects of Sherman's torching of Southern plantations, the effect on the women left behind - black and white. Despite the strengths that we have come to anticipate and expect from every mature Welty story - some fine description, as the two sisters and their slave enter the scorched Jackson, her elliptical style in which characters are introduced by mere mention and key events described by indirection, which keeps us fully attentive to every line of her fiction and creates the illusion that we are stepping into a world fully formed, no introductions or back story necessary or possible - The Burning does feel a bit Southern Gothic cliched, the Southern women tough but in despair, the slaves loyal and bewildered, the Union soldiers course and aggressive - what does this remind you of? Welty does put some of her own touches on the story - the key event, suicide of the sisters, though improbable, is quite a shocking scene, and the return of the slave girl to the plantation is very poignant and trobling. But altogether not Welty's ideal element. Two other notes on one of her very best stories, No Place for You, My Love, it's clearly one of the best and most effective uses of alternating point of view in any story, omniscient narrator but the focus back and forth between the man and the woman. 2nd, wouldn't any good editor encourage her to begin with the fantastic 2nd paragraph - she looked like a woman who was having an affair ... - rather than the tepid and largely unneccessary first one?